Public and Administrative

Landmark has an unusual strength in having one of the strongest public law teams in the country, working for the full spectrum of government departments, local government, public bodies, NGOs, charities and individuals on complex public law cases nationally and internationally. The breadth of practice within Chambers is unrivalled, ranging across environment, NHS, housing, social security, immigration, national security, human rights, education, discrimination, commercial and regulatory matters and many niche areas such as rating, village greens, open space.

A (very small) taste of some of members’ significant cases of the past few years include:

• AAA and ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] – Supreme Court – Rwanda scheme incompatible with Refugee Convention and Article 3 ECHR, and potentially procedurally unfair.
• Jones v Birmingham City Council [2023] – Supreme Court – compatibility of legislation imposing civil injunctions with Article 6 ECHR.
• R (Day) v Shropshire [2023]– Supreme Court- statutory trusts over open space.
• Secretary of State for Transport v Curzon Ltd [2023] – Compensation for Compulsory Purchase.
• HA and Others [2023] and other challenges to no recourse to public funds” scheme and asylum support schemes breach article 3 (W [2020], ST and VW [2021], DMA and Others [2020])
• Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones), Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland [2022] – Supreme Court – protest buffer zones at abortion clinics. 
• R (Begum) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] – Supreme Court – deprivation of citizenship
• London Borough of Southwark & Another v Transport for London [2018] and Hillingdon v Secretary of State and HS2 Ltd (No. 2) [2021] – Supreme Court and High Court (two of many cases on HS2 and Transport for London dominated by Landmark’s members).
• Miller [2019]  – Supreme Court- Challenge to the Prime Minister’s decision to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament.

Most of the leading social security cases:

• R (SC) v SSWP [2021] – Supreme Court – two child benefit rule
• Carmichael [2016] and RR [2019] – Supreme Court- Bedroom Tax
• R (SG) v SSWP [2015] and R (DA) v SSWP [2019] – Supreme Court - Benefit Cap:
• Challenges to new asylum accommodation including airfields, hotels and the Bibby Stockholm Barge
• KV (Sri Lanka) [2019] (proper approach to medical evidence of torture in asylum cases)

Many of the leading human rights cases (see separate human rights page) including:

• AM (Zimbabwe) (2021) – Supreme Court- article 3 health risks on return
• Many of the leading cases on the right to liberty under article 5 and the common law: Lumba, Kambadzi, Abdi, Francis, Das, Antonio, DN (Rwanda) –and recently the Brook House Inquiry [2023]
• Kiarie and Byndloss [2017] (out of country appeals in breach of article 8).

Many of our members are on Government panels of all levels. Find a list here.